


Ma Ke Kahakai (Shore)

by StrikerDouchecanoe



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Danny Williams and the Big Gay Crush, Episode: s01e20 Ma Ke Kahakai (Shore), First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, REO Speedwagon - Freeform, Songfic, ft. danny's gay freakout, it's kind of a songfic idk, proudly bi steve mcgarrett, you cannot tell me they didn't become boyfriends in this ep
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 21:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12329661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrikerDouchecanoe/pseuds/StrikerDouchecanoe
Summary: 'Cause I can't fight this feeling anymoreI've forgotten what I started fighting forIt's time to bring this ship in to the shoreAnd throw away the oars forever.-REO Speedwagon~~~~~~~~~~~~~A rewrite of S1e20 Ma Ke Kahakai (Shore) wherein Danny finds the courage to sort out his decided lack of heterosexuality, Steve is somehow a schmuck and an outrageous flirt at the same time, and the words 'big stupid crush' are used generously. It was way too fortuitious that this episode just happened to be called Shore.





	1. i heart you

“What’s wrong with REO Speedwagon?” Steve demands, batting Danny’s hand away from the radio controls in the truck.

“At seven o’clock in the morning?” Danny retorts. “This is not _waking up_ music, Steve.”

“What constitutes _waking up_ music, Danny? No, seriously, enlighten me.”

“Classics,” Danny says stubbornly.

“And REO Speedwagon doesn’t fit your definition of classics?” Steve looks incredulously offended, like he’s about to personally defend the honor of eighties synth rock to his partner then and there.

“Van Halen,” Danny says in the same tone he uses for lecturing Steve about _proper interrogation technique_ and _not hanging people from rooftops, Steven,_ and _what the hell is the matter with you?_ “Guns N’ Roses. Def Leppard. ACDC. Black Sabbath. All classic waking up music. REO Speedwagon is what they play during chick flicks during the montage where it’s raining and everyone is pining.”

Steve snorts and parks the truck. “We’re here,” he says, opening the door and jumping out before Danny can ask where _here_ is.

He soon realizes that ‘we’re here’ means ‘this is where we start running up a mountain’. Danny’s no slouch, never has been, but it’s difficult to keep pace with Steve on a normal day, let alone when Steve is so excited he’s practically leaping up the slope, and Danny is winded long before they reach the petroglyphs. He complains about the hike, but silently he’s glad for the distraction. The inside of Danny Williams’ head hasn’t been the most fun place to be over the last few weeks. Between Matty’s disappearance, the usual back-and-forth with Rachel, and the other thing that he’s affectionately begun referring to as The World’s Biggest Can Of Worms, it’s nice to run until he can’t think. And, he doesn’t admit out loud, the petroglyphs are beautiful.

And then, of course, everything goes to hell.

Finding a dead body is never pleasant; finding one unexpectedly in the middle of an otherwise beautiful day even less so. Even so, as soon as Steve pronounces the man dead, Danny’s brain is already in full on detective mode, making lists of all the planes and helicopters they’ll have to investigate, looking for pilots with small caliber guns registered in their names, checking that against who has a record and for what—and then Steve falls.

Danny sees it in slow motion, ice filling his veins as Steve grapples for purchase on the cliff face and finds none, almost going over the ledge below. He can’t stop shouting Steve’s name, thinking of all the injuries his partner could have sustained in the fall. Steve is slumped so far over the edge that it wouldn’t take much to send him tumbling off the much higher cliff below him. Finally, _finally,_ Steve moves.

“You alright?” Danny yells, trying to mask the fear in his tone.

“I’m good,” Steve calls back quietly, ignoring Danny’s request to stay still.

Danny’s stomach twists at the pained grunt Steve lets out as sits up—his left arm is sitting at a nauseating angle, and the skin between his wrist and elbow is already turning black and blue.

“Danny,” Steve calls up to his partner. “I think I’ve broken my arm.” _No shit,_ Danny thinks. “Send the rope down, okay?”

“It’s snagged on a branch.”

Steve’s voice as he gives instructions to hike to the summit of the mountain and call an evac team is remarkably even, given the near-death experience he’s just had, but Danny hears the urgency in his tone nonetheless. They’re in the wilderness, and a broken bone this far from civilization can be the difference between life and death.

“Listen to me,” he stresses as he turns to make his way up the ridge. “Do not move, alright?”

“Be careful up there,” Steve says by way of response. “It’s really steep.”

Danny takes off running, ignoring the ringing in his ears and the burning in his lungs as he rapidly gains altitude. He checks for cell signal constantly, and dials Chin Ho the second he sees a bar on the screen.

Hearing Chin and Kono’s voices on the other end of the line helps to settle the panic running amok in Danny’s stomach. It’s still an emergency, but now he feels like he can do something about it. Help is on the way, they’ve gotten a start on the murder case, and Steve isn’t going to die on the edge of a cliff. The dose of calm he receives from his teammates clears Danny’s head enough to describe the body to Kono, recalling all the details he’d mentally logged before everything went sideways.

As he races back to Steve, the fluffy white cottonball clouds that had dotted the early morning sky grow dark and menacing and much, much closer than they had seemed on the way up. Thunder echoes off the cliffs as he reaches Steve, and Danny’s just about as panicked now as he was when he left to make the phone call. If a broken bone can be the difference between life and death in good weather, he and Steve both know what it will mean if the weather turns bad.

“Hey,” Steve says, looking up at Danny on the cliff edge above him. “You get reception?”

“Yeah,” Danny says, doing his best to ignore the echo of another thunderclap. “Army evac’s on its way.”

“I don’t think we have time, alright?” Steve is looking at the approaching clouds and Danny can see the worry etched into his face underneath the dirt and blood. Danny resigns himself to the worst case scenario option and inches precariously down the cliff face to untangle the rope.

As terrifying as it is to be perched on a cliff with no real climbing knowledge and only one hand on a rope to protect him from plummeting to his death, pulling Steve up with his broken arm is worse. He’s fallen once already, and Danny’s exhausted muscles are shaking with the exertion. He can see that Steve’s having to use his injured arm to pull himself up the rock, and his stomach twists again.

And then, for the first time since they found the petroglyphs, something goes right. The distinctive _whup-whup-whup_ of helicopter blades is the sound echoing off the cliffs rather than thunder, and both men find their second wind. Danny pulls with everything he has and Steve manages to scramble up the last stretch of rock. Danny pulls Steve over the lip of the cliff and sprawls in the sandy dirt, Steve falling back against his chest.

Danny doesn’t let go of his partner until he’s firmly strapped into his harness, and only then does he allow the knot of fear in his chest to unravel.

“Hey, Danny,” Steve shouts over the noise of the helicopter. “Thanks, brother.”

Danny’s insides do an interesting series of gymnastics that he chalks up to relief, ignoring the flush climbing his chest. Disregarding every logical bone in his body, he beams up at Steve and points to his own chest, draws a heart in the air, and points emphatically at his partner. He doesn’t mean to mouth the words ‘I love you’, but he catches himself forming them anyway. And when the camo-clad Army medic comes back down to retrieve Danny, he’s still grinning.


	2. all you, babe

The chopper ride is short but silent, as there aren’t enough headsets for all of the passengers. Danny, for one, welcomes the silence. He needs time to think.

The thing that he’s been referring to as The World’s Biggest Can Of Worms started a long time ago, right around the time he and Rachel split. At first, it had been sort of a wry joke with himself—ha, ha, can’t make things work with a woman, what if I’m gay or something, ha ha—but the thought had wormed its way into his brain and by the time the divorce was final, Danny Williams found himself in the middle of a full-on sexuality crisis.

It was surprising, really, that he hadn’t figured it out sooner. The more he looked back over his life, the more he came to realize this had been there all along, and he had done a spectacular job of hiding it from himself until now. He’d always noticed other men in a way that couldn’t be explained away by admiration or jealousy, but until things went sideways with Rachel he had steadfastly ignored it. With his relocation to the opposite side of America had come the opportunity for a fresh start, however, and Danny had been trying the word out in his head, tentatively warming to the idea that he was most likely gay.

Meeting Steve McGarrett had been the final straw. Danny couldn’t ignore the fluttery feeling he got in his chest around Steve, nor could he pretend not to notice that his new partner was stupidly, unbelievably hot. For a few weeks, it had seemed like maybe, _just maybe_ , the feeling was mutual—and then Danny found out about Catherine Rollins.

Now, sitting in an Army helo next to the man who’s become his best friend in the world, Danny feels like his world has been turned sideways. He’s resolutely _not_ looking at Steve, though he can feel his partner’s eyes boring a hole in his temple. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to confront what he just confessed to Steve back on the cliff, and he really doesn’t know if he’s ready for Steve’s reaction.

When they touch down at Tripler Army Medical Center, Steve has to lean on Danny and Chin to make it to the emergency room doors. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, Steve seems to be feeling the aftermath of the tumble he took, and one look at his glassy eyes tells Danny he’s likely concussed. Danny’s prepared to justify wanting to wait at the hospital, has a thousand and one excuses lined up for the benefit of Steve and Chin and anyone else with questions, but Chin assures the cadet working the triage desk that they’ll wait for the results of Steve’s x-rays without so much as a glance in Danny’s direction.

“What happened up there?” Chin asks as they take a seat in the waiting area.

Danny shrugs and tries to keep his voice from shaking. “Steve climbed down to take a look at the body, and he fell on the way back up.”

“Wonder what a body’s doing so far out,” Chin muses. “Body dump, you figure?”

“Probably,” Danny confirms. “He wasn’t dressed for a hike, no signs of struggle at the scene, and not much blood.”

Chin nods. “Kono’s looking for an ID in the system based off the photo you got. We’ll be able to get moving on this once we know how the boss is.”

“Yeah,” Danny says, staring at his hands, and they lapse into silence until an Army doctor walks into the waiting area with a clipboard in hand.

“You boys with Commander McGarrett?” the doctor asks.

“Yeah, that’s us,” Danny says, getting to his feet without even thinking. “He gonna be okay?”

The doctor looks at his clipboard. “Commander McGarrett shattered his left forearm in the fall. He’s also sustained several lacerations and a moderate concussion. We can set the arm without surgery, but we’d like to keep him a while to make sure there are no complications with his head.”

Danny feels the knot in his chest unwinding again, the air _whooshing_ out of his lungs in an unbidden sigh of sheer relief. Chin smiles, shakes the doctor’s hand, and leads a stunned and admittedly rather dizzy Danny out to the HPD squad car waiting to give them a ride back to headquarters.

Being able to do his job helps settle Danny’s frayed nerves. He’s able to lose himself in the methodical aspect of police work, and connecting the dots between bits and pieces of evidence has always provided him a degree of mental clarity—which, if he’s being honest, he desperately needs right now.

Admittedly, fish scales seem like a long shot, but a lead is a lead and Danny is ready to hunt it down. What he’s not ready for is looking McGarrett in the eye. But then, he supposes, he wasn’t ready for any of the life-changing things that have happened to him over the years. Maybe no one ever is. He sets to pacing around the computer table while he waits for Steve, his mind listing the knowns and unknowns of the case as he walks.

_Jack Leung, victim, found dead in the mountains. Likely a body dump. Suspects: Sal Groves (alibi checks out), ????_

_Fish scales in small caliber gunshot wound. Connection to Jordan Rutherford?? Waiting on ballistics. Groves no longer in possession of helicopter, which means body dump was carried out by ??????_

He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts he almost doesn’t hear his phone ringing.

Danny beats Steve and Kamekona to Morimoto’s by about five seconds, which means he has no time to prepare for Steve all but _swaggering_ over to him, wearing a shit-eating grin from ear to ear.

“Hey, D,” Steve calls.

“How’s the arm?” Danny asks by way of response, trying not to acknowledge the fact that his throat has gone dry and his tie feels much too tight.

“All fixed up,” Steve says, stopping much too close to Danny. He reaches out with his good hand and straightens Danny’s tie, and Danny could swear he feels his heart stop dead.

“My tie is fine, thank you,” he gripes, catching Steve’s wrist to stop him from fiddling with Danny’s collar.

“The fact that you’re wearing a tie is so far from fine,” Steve says, but the usual teasing edge is missing from his voice. Between the warm look on Steve’s face and the strong steady beat of Steve’s pulse beneath his fingertips, Danny is well on his way to being a flustered wreck.

“It looks professional,” he retorts without any real heat, remembering too late to let go of Steve.

Steve just shakes his head, still smiling like he didn’t fall off a cliff this morning and spend half the day in a hospital bed at Tripler. He looks like he’s weighing his words, getting ready to say something important, but in the end he just asks, “So what are we doing here?”

“We,” Danny says, grateful for the opportunity to snap into work mode, “are following up on those fish scales you found on the vic.”

Steve nods. “Lead the way,” he says, ghosting his good hand across the small of Danny’s back as they turn to walk inside the restaurant. Danny does his best to ignore how the small touch makes him feel—like there’s no more oxygen in the world and his lungs are trying to suck in air where none exists.

The chef at Morimoto’s is more than happy to lead Steve and Danny into the kitchen to look at the fish they’re after, and Danny’s heart rate is finally approaching something that could be considered normal (and really, it’s embarrassing that a brush of Steve’s hand has him so wrecked, but sue him) until the lid comes off the fish cooler.

“All you, babe, I can’t get my cast wet.” Steve is _smirking_ and Danny’s fairly certain he knows what cardiac arrest feels like.

“That’s low,” he manages, not talking about the fact that he has to dig through several pounds of raw fish. “That’s really low.” The smirk on Steve’s lips grows into a grin, and _fuck him,_ he knows exactly what he’s doing. “What are we looking for, exactly?”

“We’ll know when we find it, so be thorough,” Steve teases.

“You’re gonna pay for this,” Danny swears, still not talking about the raw fish. “One hundred percent.”

Steve holds Danny’s gaze for a long moment, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Danny turns his attention to the cooler in a valiant but futile effort not to blush. When he’s done, he wipes his fishy hand on Steve’s chest and stalks outside.

“Hey!” Steve calls after him. “ _Hey!”_

“What,” Danny demands, turning on his partner, “is _with_ you today?”

“What’s with _me?”_ Steve sounds as astonished as he looks. “I don’t know, babe, what’s with you today?”

“That,” Danny snaps. “That is exactly what I am talking about. What’s going on with the fixing my tie and the staring and the _babe,_ for God’s sakes?”

“I don’t know, Danno, what was going on with the sign language out on the cliff earlier?”

Danny sighs. This is the conversation he’s been hoping for and dreading in equal measure all day. He steels himself to explain and he’s just taken the deepest breath of his life when Steve’s phone rings.

“Kono,” Steve says, eyes still locked on Danny’s. “Yeah, sounds good, we’ll meet you back at HQ.”

“Kono might have a lead,” he explains after hanging up.

“We are not done talking about this,” Danny says, unable to conceal the raw edge to his voice. “I am going home to change my shirt, and we are going to finish this case, and when that is done we are going to finish this conversation, do you understand me?”

“Yeah, Danny, I understand,” Steve says. “Let’s go to work.”


	3. big stupid crush

The rest of the day passes mercifully quickly. Once they begin piecing together the puzzle of Jack Leung’s murder and the connection to the Rutherfords, each piece falls into place faster than the last. It’s dark when Danny and Steve arrive at the Rutherford house, and it doesn’t take Steve long to find Donald.

“I’m just wondering,” Danny hisses as they search the house, “do you just keep military tech on you at all times? Grenades, infrared cameras, do you have a ghillie suit I should know about in your center console?”

“Faster than the K-9 unit though, right?” Steve hisses back, and Danny relents.

Disarming Donald Rutherford turns out to be a piece of cake, although Danny doesn’t miss the tightness around Steve’s eyes that indicate his broken arm is in pain.

“Tackling a guy with your arm in a cast, you _schmuck,”_ Danny grouses as he cuffs Rutherford. Despite the fact that his arm must be killing him, Steve is back to the easy grin he’d worn as he’d straightened Danny’s tie.

Rutherford is blustering about rights and his lawyer and his lowlife of a son, and Danny pushes the muzzle of his gun between Rutherford’s shoulderblades to shut him up.

“You can’t do that!” Rutherford bellows. “You can’t draw your gun on me!”

“Watch us,” Steve counters. “Book ‘em, Danno.”

“Gladly,” Danny says. “Donald Rutherford, you’re under arrest for the murder of Jack Leung, accessory to the murder of Vicki Hailama, and aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

HPD backup has arrived by the time Steve and Danny drag Rutherford outside, and Danny is glad to shove this particular murdering jackass in the back of a squad car. And maybe he’s not that careful of Donald’s head as he shoves him in, but as far as Danny’s concerned that’s the least Rutherford deserves for killing an innocent man, not to mention trying to smuggle his murdering, would-be rapist son out of the country. He’s glad the case is closed.

Closing the case, however, means he and Steve have a conversation to get back to. It seems Steve hasn’t forgotten that either, because when Danny turns to face him, Steve’s staring into Danny’s eyes with one of the most intense looks on his face Danny’s ever seen.

“So,” Danny says.

“So,” Steve agrees. “You wanna drive somewhere?”

“Yeah. Let’s—uh. Let’s do that,” Danny manages. He feels like his tac vest is choking him.

Predictably, they end up at Steve’s house.

“Presumptuous,” Danny comments with a raised eyebrow when Steve cuts the engine in the driveway. Steve has the grace to blush, color spreading high on his cheekbones.

“We can go somewhere else,” he offers, staring out the windshield. The knuckles of his right hand are white where he grips the gearshift, Danny notices.

“I’m kidding, babe,” Danny says, knocking his arm against Steve’s, and watches as a modicum of tension bleeds out of his partner’s shoulders.

Steve leads the way straight through the house and out to the beach, not even bothering to turn a light on. He sits down at the edge of the waves, staring at the water, and Danny joins him—for once uncaring about the sand he’ll be washing out of his pockets for weeks to come.

“So, back on the cliff,” Steve says, still watching the ocean.

“Back on the cliff,” Danny echoes, his heart hammering out a wild rhythm in stark contrast to the peace of the moonlit beach. “Once, back in Jersey, when Gracie was little, she fell off the swing at the playground and broke her wrist. It was just a tiny fracture, y’know, but that second where she didn’t get up stopped my heart.” Steve’s looking at him now, eyes dark and focused. “My best friend falls off a cliff today, breaks his arm, coulda died, and…” He trails off, unsure of how to continue.

“I’m okay, Danny,” Steve says, voice quiet and even.

Danny sighs. “Yeah,” he says at last. “But you almost weren’t, Steven.”

Steve nods thoughtfully and goes back to studying the waves. Danny gets the sense he’s waiting him out, giving him the space to say what he needs to, and it’s so unlike the Steve he’s used to that it takes him aback.

“I just realized,” Danny says finally, “that my life is too short and too dangerous for me not to be honest with the people I care about, and I care about you, and I got tired of lying about my big stupid crush, alright?”

Steve’s inhale is so sharp it could cut glass, and he’s staring at Danny like Danny’s something out of a dream. “Big stupid crush,” he echoes.

“Big stupid crush,” Danny confirms.

“How long?” Steve asks, reaching out with his injured arm and brushing the pad of his thumb across Danny’s bottom lip. Danny swallows thickly and forces words out of his throat.

“The day you shot Victor Hesse,” he manages, and the words are barely out of his mouth when Steve is kissing him.

Danny thinks he might be dying. Steve kisses like he fights, warm and alive and more graceful than anyone his height has a right to be. Danny’s hand is in his hair and Steve’s stubble is scraping his lips and he’s never felt more achingly alive than he does right now. Being kissed by Steve McGarrett rips him apart at the seams and puts him back together a new man, a braver man, a steadier man.

Long seconds pass before Steve pulls back to breathe, though Danny’s fingers tangled in his hair don’t let him go far. Danny’s eyes are still closed when he hears himself ask, “How long for you?”

Steve steals another kiss before answering, a gentle press of his lips against Danny’s that doesn’t last any longer than a heartbeat but sets Danny’s heart on fire all over again.

“Ever since you got shot and punched me in the face,” Steve answers.

“Since you got me shot,” Danny corrects him. Steve lets out a breathy laugh and Danny takes it upon himself to kiss Steve back into silence.

Danny hadn’t let himself think about what actually kissing another man would be like, and now that he has, he knows imagination couldn’t have compared to this. Steve’s heart is racing beneath his palm and his good hand has made a complete mess of Danny’s hair and Danny feels, for the first time since moving to Hawai’i, like he’s home.


End file.
